Sufren Los Niños: Exploring the Impact of Unauthorized Immigration Status on Children's Well‐Being

Abstract

The present study examines the effect of unauthorized immigration status on child well-being at a time of elevated immigration rates, economic decline, and unprecedented local lawmaking related to immigration. Immigrant families today are likely to differ from those of the past in that they are more likely to be from Latin America or the Caribbean and include unprecedented numbers of unauthorized immigrants. In addition, they are settling in destinations that have not historically had immigrant populations. The present study draws on interviews with 40 families from an emerging immigrant destination in north central Indiana to help illuminate the ways in which unauthorized immigration status influences child well-being. Results illustrate that unauthorized status extends beyond the individual to families and that mixed-status family situations create unique challenges for these families. More specifically, these results show the ways in which unauthorized immigrant status may impact family stress and uncertainty, health outcomes, and educational attainment and may result in increased social isolation for children in immigrant families.

The Distress of Citizen-Children with Detained and Deported Parents

“…Our findings are consistent with other studies (e.g., Allen et al 2013; Ayón 2014; Brabeck and Xu 2010; Chavez et al 2012; Delva et al 2013; Dreby 2012; Yoshikawa 2011) in building an empirical base on how current immigration policy and deportation practices affect the mental health and well-being of citizen-children and their families. Among the three group citizen-children that we studied—a group in Mexico whose parents were deported, a group in the US whose parents had been deported or were undergoing deportation procedures, and a comparison group of citizen-children of undocumented immigrant parents with neither detention nor deportation proceedings—there were few differences that reached statistical significance.…”

“…Dreby (2012) reported that children's daily lives are not only been directly altered by parental deportation but also indirectly affected by the immigration policies that criminalize their parents, relatives, and neighbors regardless of their citizenship status and actual involvement with immigration enforcements. For example, on the basis of interviews conducted with 40 families in north central Indiana, Chavez et al (2012) found that the uncertainty of living in a mixed-status family raised parents and children's stress levels.…”

“…The most commonly seen problems were attentional deficits, withdrawal and depression, anxiety and depression, and some rule-breaking behaviors. Parents’ legal vulnerability and experiences of detention and deportation, in particular, were strongly associated with children's depression, anxiety, fears of separation, social isolation, self-stigma, aggression, and withdrawal (Brabeck and Xu 2010; Chavez et al 2012; Delva et al 2013; Dreby 2012; Gonzales et al 2013). …”

Applying a Community Violence Framework to Understand the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Threat on Latino Children

“…Qualitative, quantitative, and ethnographic research conveys that children of undocumented parents live in constant fear that one or both of their parents may be arrested, incarcerated, and/or deported (Chavez, Lopez, Englebrecht, & Viramontez Anguiano, 2012;Costello, 2016;Dreby, 2012;Sanders et al, 2013;Satinsky, Hu, Heller, & Farhang, 2013). Evidence from neuroscience research indicates that exposure to circumstances that produce persistent fear and chronic anxiety "predict significant risk for adverse long-term outcomes from which children do not recover easily" (National Educators indicate that they are experiencing symptoms of secondary traumatic stress and a sense of deterioration in trust in their school communities.…”

The impact of language barriers and immigration status on the care experience for Spanish‐speaking caregivers of patients with pediatric cancer

“…Others reported that their status impacted their decision regarding enrolling in clinical trials. Undocumented caregivers have been shown to report more emotional distress from uncertainty of how their undocumented status will impact their ability to provide proper medical care for their child 38.…”